


Photographs and Memories

by Quoshara



Series: Bits and bits and bits. (Prompt fics in various fandoms) [7]
Category: Riptide (TV)
Genre: Created Family, Gen, Memories, Photographs, Vietnam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-07
Updated: 2011-10-07
Packaged: 2017-10-24 09:20:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/261714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quoshara/pseuds/Quoshara
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A short fill for Happyfest 2010 on Live Journal. The prompt was, as I recall: Nick/Cody, photographs...but I'm not certain. *s*</p>
            </blockquote>





	Photographs and Memories

* * *

Most people, Cody knew, used photographs to mark the important and happy times in their lives. Proms and Homecoming dances; graduations; the random pictures of a nameless beach or balcony view that meant a vacation; and later, tissue-covered and prized, impressions that other people had taken of weddings. Sometimes, there were shots of friends and parties and maybe someone's first car. Later still, there might be pictures of babies and family get-togethers, birthday parties and kids in sporting gear smiling at the camera with front teeth missing.

Cody's photo album didn't look anything like that, though. Instead there were grainy black and whites and faded Polaroids in which orange seemed to be the only lasting color, all of them pictures of guys in rag-tag uniforms, and many of them labeled with dates that meant nothing to anyone but him. Dates when they'd shipped out for home, or the date when they hadn't returned from a mission, or the date when survival had meant something because it hadn't been anyone's but theirs. Ghoulish, someone had told him once, but hell, they all deserved to have those times remembered, even if it was only with a date in a battered photo album.

Still, there were a lot of smiling faces in there, lots of pranks played and immortalized – one guy, _Sonny… Something,_ his dark hair bleached out while he was too drunk to protest, his boots laced up with licorice whips, and shirt-sleeves sewn shut while he slept. They had found relief in silliness, hiding and denying the pain that surrounded them.

And there were pictures of Nick.

Nick captured for posterity, diving for a volley-ball during a quick off-duty pick-up game at their firebase. Nick grinning, shades pushed up on his forehead as he leaned back against his chopper. Nick with his shirt sleeves rolled up and a beer in his hand, trying to coax some tunes out of the beat-up radio that was one of their few connections to the real world between patrols.

In place of laughing prom dates and parties and graduation, there were photos that Cody had taken after they'd come home. There were shots of Nick and the Mimi when it really _was_ little more than a hunk of scrap. Nick, covered in grease, halfway under the Corvette and flipping him off for interrupting his work to take the picture.

Then there was his favorite one. He and Nick, lounging on the deck of the Riptide, Nick's hand resting gently on his leg, the other waving around as he tried to tell some bullshit story that neither of them cared about, or even believed, but made them both laugh.

Yeah… his photo album might be different than the ones that other people had, but it was still full of the things that were important, the things he loved.

  


* * *

  



End file.
